Page 207 of Lessons in Cruelty

“You’re a fucking lunatic!” I ward him off with a pointed finger. “You stay the fuck away from me. Stay the fuck out of my life. Just…fuck off!”

I slam the door and throw the gearshift in reverse, taking off with his Land Rover at a dangerous speed. At the next intersection, I bang my hand against the steering wheel as I fight back a sob.

Then I realize it’s his steering wheel, that I need to take this car back to his house and fetch mine.

I pull over and have a good sob about it, so I don’t cause an accident. And then I drive back to the sorority house, because even though I desperately want to drive to the diner and beg for my job back, I’m in no state to do that right now.

Got to pull myself together first.

Got to figure out how to get out of this invisible trap Bastian’s spun around me like a motherfucking spiderweb. But even as I think it, I know it’s too late.

He’s already in my life.

In my head.

This spider doesn’t need a web. It’s already paralyzed its fly.

Chapter 52

Haven

Three weeks.

That's all it took for my carefully constructed plans to collapse like a first grader’s science project.

How did my life get this fucked?

Maybe there’s something to the whole Heaven and Hell thing, because this feels biblical, like I’m being punished on a karmic level.

I let myself relax for one minute at the taco stand. Stopped to smell the flowers one time at that boutique.

Then the Almighty slaps me on the knuckles with a ruler…wrapped in barbed wire.

This is what happens when you let two different predators mark their territory on your body in the same week. Kai’s knife wound throbs under the bandaid. I can still feel Bastian’s fingers around my throat.

Should have known this was all just some elaborate misery trap disguised as a second chance.

I was emptying out my uncle’s overflowing trash when I saw the crumpled up envelope from Agony Hollow College inside.

Thought I’d gotten too many cocaine crumbs on myself when I brushed my teeth that morning. But I opened up the envelope, and I read the letter congratulating me on being awarded the Social Change grant, and I burst into tears.

I’d done it.

I’d fucking done it.

I thought the hard part was over. I’d miraculously gotten my GPA up to the required 3.5, volunteered every Sunday at the local church until the pastor gave me a recommendation letter, and spent nearly a week rewriting my application essay.

The girl from Riverside with the threadbare clothes and the haunted eyes had finally gotten a seat at the table.

And I was fucking ready.

Ready for any academic challenge thrown my way. Ready to pretend I belonged in those lecture halls.

What I wasn't ready for was them.

Kai. The boy from the woods who taught me how to hurt before he taught me how to heal. Now a man whose angry green eyes follow me across campus like he's calculating the exact pressure needed to break each of my bones.

Every time I see him, he excavates another buried memory. Pretty soon, he’ll have dug up the girl I was before I became whoever the hell I am now.